As telecommunications and data networks become more fiber intensive, larger and larger numbers of fiber optic jumpers are being placed in the central office. During the course of normal business, a technician may be required to trace the path of a fiber jumper in a facility. With today's technology, a technician must trace the jumper visually (if possible), or physically grab the jumper and follow it through the fiber management portion of the route. That action, while necessary, introduces the possibility of disrupting any of the other jumpers that are in the area.
Various techniques have been used to correlate the ends of optical fiber jumpers in a central office or other optical exchange facility. U.S. Pat. No. 5,666,453 to Dannenmann teaches the use of LEDs or other indicators adjacent the terminal connectors of an optical fiber jumper. A pair of electrical conductors in the cable itself carry current to both indicators from connectors at either end. A technician provides electrical power to one of the connectors and looks for a lit indicator at the opposite end.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,821,510 to Cohen et al. teaches the use of unique optically encoded data, such as a bar code, that is associated with each jumper connector and additional encoded data associated with each exchange housing receptacle. The data is read using a handheld optical scanner and transmitted to a computer where the optical jumpers are tracked.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,808,116 to Eslambolchi et al. discloses a system wherein a radio frequency identification system is used to read RFID tags placed in ST fiber jumper connectors. A display on the reader identifies the jumper to the technician.
In each of the above techniques, the actual path a fiber jumper takes through the facility is not traced. Instead, the fiber ends are identified. A technician must know approximately where to look for each end of the jumper because both ends must be “read” to complete a trace. In a large central office with multiple bays and thousands of jumpers, it remains difficult to locate a particular jumper without knowing where to look.
There therefore remains a need for an improved technique for physically tracing an optical fiber jumper through a central office.